$100 million for schools? Not if it’s for charters!

Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is giving a $100 million grant to improve Newark‘s public schools. Having spent all but the last eight years of my life in New Jersey, I think that’s a wonderful thing. Newark is a city that was devasted in the 1960s by “white flight,” the loss of its manufacturing and tax base, and riots. Some portions of Newark have never been rebuilt.

You would think that the people of New Jersey would be thrilled that someone is willing to invest so much in Newark’s horrific school system. You would be wrong. The Star-Ledger’s man on education, Bob Braun, is mocking the gift, and managed to find quite a number of people to quote who think that there’s something awful about private individuals trying to help public schools improve. Surprise, nearly all of them are affiliated with teachers unions.

Oh, good. Now we’re solving intractable urban school problems by relying on a 26-year-old billionaire geek from California and Oprah Winfrey. Going on national television in an orchestrated media blitz with two of the most ambitious politicians in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

All deciding in Chicago what Newark schools really need and what the laws governing the schools really mean.

What’s next – Snooki as education commissioner? Paulie Walnuts as Newark superintendent? How about a seat for Danny DeVito on the state Supreme Court? There is an opening.

Yes, because it’s not like these guys are actually trying to do some good with their money. Zuckerberg put a catch on the money—he wants Newark Mayor Cory Booker to oversee the fund. Horrors! A donor who wants to have a say over how his money is spent!

“The devil is in the details,” Oliver said. “We have to be very careful in terms of the intrusion into the public system and any donor that would provide funding to the Newark schools system, but I do want to examine what strings come with it.”

Until 1984, Newark’s mayor was in charge of overseeing the running of the city schools. Braun has a funny way of mentioning why it stopped:

Charles Bell, the former Central Ward councilman, led the successful 1984 fight to wrest control of schools from the mayor’s office through a referendum. It was the beginning of the end of the career of the city’s first African-American mayor, Kenneth A. Gibson.

Yes, it did end Gibson’s career. Because he was charged with conspiracy, bribery, fraud, tax fraud, and stealing from NJ’s public schools. Gibson was removed after sixteen years as Newark’s mayor because he was a corrupt SOB who stole from the poor and gave to—himself and his cronies. Until Cory Booker, this was the status quo for Newark’s mayors—and the schools of Newark suffered for it. Now, they have an honest mayor who has been trying to bring Newark back to the city it was when my parents grew up there.

A hundred million dollar grant to Newark should be a thing to celebrate. But not if you’re a liberal who thinks that private schools and school choice are anathema. Really, Bob, retire already. You were old when I was a kid, and I’m safely ensconced in middle age now. Or at least, open your mind up just a tad, and allow the kids of Newark to have a chance at a future.

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2 Responses to $100 million for schools? Not if it’s for charters!

  1. tommy651 says:

    newark was not devasted by “white flight.” this is a leftist myth. people moving out of a city don’t cause it to turn into a slum. there isn’t any place in america where the same people living there were living there thirty years ago. population changes all the time. some areas stayed the same while some deteriorated. it was the new people who move in that cause the devastation. its changes in behavior not changes in race that devastated the cities. newark was destroyed by socialism; welfare, the projects, the destruction of the family, the destruction of the business community, the socialist taxation and the resultant political corruption that results from it were what caused newark’s downfall. it wasn’t people moving out and new people moving in. if that were the case all of america would be devastated.

  2. Michael Lonie says:

    Zuckerberg should ignore the public school system, which is in thrall to the bosses of the teachers’ unions and the corrupt pols (including at the Department of Education, a useless federal agency that should be abolished, its buildings torn down, and the sites where they once existed sown with salt to prevent it ever rising again). He should establish private schools as well as promote and support any parochial schools or successful private schools already operating in the city. Channel the money thorugh the parents by offering scholarships to children to go to successful schools. More money is not going to fix public schools, they already get more money than they can use effectively, and it is wasted. What is needed for schools is better thinking, but you will never get that while the unions have a monopoly over teaching and politicians deliver the money to their cronies and campaign contributors.

    Education isn’t rocket science, people have done it, very effectively, for generations. The public schools used to work quite well. That was before ED-schools and their faddish ideas became de rigeur requirements for teachers, before the unions made tenure for incompetents the primary demand of their activities, before the Federal Government got involved in it. Such influences have ruined the public schools thorughout most of the country. If they were truly reformed and the teachers concentrated on teaching they could do the job much better for much less money. If rich donors like Zuckerberg want to help they should be pushing school choice and effective private schools.

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